Carol, a member of metabolism.com, recently posted her approach to healthy weight gain. I thought it was interesting enought to post on the main blog. My major concern with her advice is that some people are lactose intolerant and a diet high in dairy products as Carol outlines, could cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Many people are unaware they are lactose intolerant since this problem can develop later in life (20’s, 30’s 40’s). As a kid they could eat ice cream, cheese, drink milk without a problem but slowly they develop frequent heart burn, diarrhea, gas etc and fail to attribute it to dairy intake.

Anyway, here is Carol’s secret to weight gain:

Carol writes:

Ok, I found something that helps me to maintain what I have, but as yet I haven’t been able to actually gain any weight: Dairy products, lots of them, and don’t go for the lite or skim version – go for the gold. I have been going through about a gallon to a gallon and a half of soymilk (the one with the extra vanilla in it. Has about 190 calories per serving. Also I make sure to have yogurt every day and I put honey in and granola on top. Cheese and cracker snacks are good too. I have also find that if I do anything physical (walk the dog, work in the yard etc) I need to have a large heavy (but healthy) snack right after and sit quietly for a good 20 or 30 minutes. The key seems to be stay away from the junk food….for most it packs the calories on but for us it burns right through and you just end up not feeling good as your body doesn’t get what it needs.
Take heart – most of you that I am hearing from are much younger (I am 52, 5′5″ and 103 pounds) I have been battling this since I was a kid. I was always told after kids, age 40 etc it would get better – it didn’t for me, but maybe it will for you.